Alone
by SerialLover
Summary: Post-finale 9. After his battle with Zod, Clark has disappeared, and Chloe must explain all to Lois. A John Doe is found clinging to his life in Metropolis. Alone, they must all struggle to come to terms with their new reality.
1. Chapter 1

Chloe had waited the night. She had waited until she knew that the Kandorians were gone - they had disappeared along with the violence they had brought to Earth. When the dust settled, she contacted the Justice League and sent them to search for Oliver. Now, there was only one thing left for her to do. She picked up her cellphone and dialed Lois.

* * *

"Lois, it's about Clark. I don't know how to explain this to you," she started. "But..."

"No, no - you don't have to worry. I know. I understand it all now. Clark's the one. He's the Blur, and he just couldn't tell me. But I know now. He kissed me, and I realized it. I should have known all along. I don't know why I didn't just realize it before. I was so suspicious but..."

"Lois. You're right, but... but that's not what I have to tell you."

"What do you mean? What could possibly be bigger than that? My boyfriend's a superhero, and now I know. He just hasn't been answering my calls. I have to go find him."

Chloe sighed. This wasn't going to be easy. She took Lois by the arm and led her to the couch in her apartment. Lois, jittery with excitement and enthusiasm, jostled her legs, folding and unfolding them with impatience. She knew she had to find Clark, talk to him, tell him that she knew, and that she loved him. For him, not for the Blur. And Chloe was just taking up her time for no reason - she needed to get out of there, and she had no idea why Chloe had called her, the morning after the Blur - no, Clark - saved her, telling her they needed to talk.

Chloe took Lois' hands. She opened her mouth to speak but the words didn't come out. She stared into her cousin's eyes, shivering from a chill that was not caused by a wayward draft, but instead by the paradigm shift she was about to impart.

"God, Chloe. You're not breaking up with me. Just get on with it. I need to get out of here."

Chloe took a deep breath. She started again:

"Lois, I'm glad Clark finally told you about him, who he is. He wanted to for so long, but it was never safe for you to know. He never even told me - I just discovered it by myself, years ago. We all discovered it. He didn't want to keep it from you, but he felt he had to, to keep you safe."

She faltered again, turning away from Lois to hide the tears glistening in her eyes.

"Chloe, who else knows? Besides you and me?"

In a voice thick with tears and grief, she answered "Well, Clark's parents, obviously. And me, you, Ollie, Lana knew... Tess found out too. But the important thing is... well, Clark's gone. He's not coming back."

"Wait." Lois' heart skipped a beat. "What do you mean, he's gone? He - he can't be gone. He loves me, and I love him. You don't know what you're talking about."

"Lois. This is going to take a while, but I have to explain everything. You deserve to know what happened."

And so Chloe began to explain the story of Clark Kent. Stuttering at times, and faltering for moments, she described his history on Earth - from the meteor shower that began it all to the discovery of his powers during high school to the two distinct lives he led, as Clark and as the Blur.

As she listened, Lois' face took on an expression of what could only be described as enlightenment. All the memories she had of disasters in Metropolis and in Smallville were suddenly explained. Lois understood - as though she had finally fought her way to the eye of the storm, and now stood in the calm of the center. All of those years, of poking and prodding, of underestimating his abilities, of overestimating her worldly perspective in comparison to his small town ways, caught up to her. She could not even begin to calculate the apologies she owed him, nor could she even comprehend the difficulties he had faced, the burden of his secret. But for all of that, she loved him even more than words could express.

Chloe's voice slowed, and came to a halt. She studied Lois for a moment, debating what she should say - how she should deal this final blow. The explanation of why the love of her cousin's life was gone forever.

Caught up in the story, Lois had nearly forgotten Chloe's declaration that Clark had disappeared. But suddenly the thought reemerged.

"What does this have to do with Clark leaving? I still don't understand why you would say that."

"The thing is... those aliens that you were researching... The whole Book of Rao thing... All of it. It is real. And Clark - he had to stop Zod from taking over Earth - from killing more people. The Book of Rao took them all to a world of their own, away from here, where they could recreate Krypton, and start again. He didn't want to go, Lois, but he can't come back..."

Lois screamed as sobs began to wrack her body. "No! No! He couldn't leave me! He can't leave me!"

Chloe hugged her cousin, and began to weep as well.


	2. Chapter 2

The red and white lights of the ambulance flashed as the sirens created the parting of cars in the central street of Metropolis. The body that had been recovered was broken beyond anything the EMTs had ever seen before.

"Looks like the guy fell from the top of the damn building. I don't know how he's still alive," said the first EMT to another, after he had intubated the disfigured male victim.

"I hope they catch the guy who did this. The poor guy deserves at least that... but... I don't think he's gonna make it..."

* * *

Two days later, John Doe still lay in a hospital bed, attached to a heart monitor. He had been de-intubated, but the beep-beep of the monitor was still the only sound heard in the room. No one had come to visit, no family or friends seemed to miss him, no one seemed to care that he lay in there - alone, and barely breathing.

He had arrived with nearly every bone in his body shattered. He would never walk again - that much the doctors could promise. He had a laceration across his chest that seemed to have been infected before he even reached the hospital, and the stab wound in his side had pierced a number of vital organs. But beyond all of these other wounds, the poison running through his system worried the doctors the most.

They had never seen such a compound. It was a mineral that had seeped into his blood, causing his immune system to nearly fail. His white blood cell count was low, his clotting factor worse, and the prospect of infection was increasing quickly. There was little they could think to do.

They studied the poison, but could no identify it. It wasn't like the other meteor rocks they had worked with - it did not seem to affect most human cells. The petri dishes they had placed its particles into were fine - the substance seemed truly benign. Except for the John Doe on the table.

It was simple. The man was dying. And there was no one even there to see him go.

* * *

She cried herself to sleep most nights. After the lights were out, and her facade of strength and serene understanding could be removed, Chloe wept. She missed them - her men. She missed Ollie's handsome face and the way in which their relationship had been growing. She missed the last words he said to her - his "I love you" should have caused the heavens to lift her up, but instead increased her awareness of the panic and pain he was experiencing. She missed Clark. Her best friend since she could remember - her buddy, the love of her life for so many years. She at least had hopes of seeing Oliver again, but Clark - he was gone forever.

* * *

Lois was a mess. She was alone. She had lost, in one fail swoop, the love of her life, her best friend, and the only person who gave her a sense of purpose to her existence. There would be no more candlelit dinners or coffee runs in the middle of the day. No more Smallville to torture and tease. There would be no more calls to the telephone booth on the corner or missions to accomplish. There was no one to save her anymore.

The Blur was gone. But more importantly, so was Clark Kent.


	3. Chapter 3

So I realized just now I never includes those things about not owning Smallville that everyone else includes... Not sure why they do, but hey - in case you were confused, I don't own any of this. But here's chapter 3! Please review! It really is what keeps me going!

* * *

It had been a week, and Chloe was beginning to lose hope. She had sent Bart, A.C., and Elaina out to the ends of the Earth to find Oliver, but there was no sign of him. Bart was speeding across Africa and Asia, covering as much land as possible; A.C. was, as expected, scouring coastlines; and Elaina was assigned the American continent and Europe. But for all of the new and improved satellite technology they were using, Watchtower was of little help.

And Chloe was running out of ideas. She had scanned the planet from every angle and had used every sensor in her arsenal to locate suspicious activity that might reveal the whereabouts of her green-leather clad hero. But the only facts she knew about Oliver's kidnappers were that they were not Kandorian. While it ruled out interplanetary abductors, there were still 8 billion homegrown possibilities.

* * *

The days were hard for Lois. She walked into the Daily Planet, and, without fail, expected to see Clark smiling at her, two cups of coffee in his hands.

I guess I know why the coffee was never cold when I got here, Lois thought wryly. She didn't find any comfort in the statement. It was hard to see his nameplate sitting on the desk across from her, but she had decided against informing the new editors of his disappearance. She couldn't explain that he had left to lead his people on a new planet, anymore than Clark could've gotten a tax write-off for community service. It would be easier, in the long run, to let him turn into a missing person whose whereabouts need never be discovered.

But for now, that meant staring at his empty seat, letting his desk – usually spic and span – gather dust and unopened mail.

* * *

Nighttime at the Kent Farm had never been lonelier. Clark and Martha had made the place home, but now, without either of them, it seemed like a ghost town. Chloe and Lois sat on the front porch staring into the stars.

"I guess it's supposed to make me feel better? That he's somewhere out there?" Lois asked, gesturing to the stars. "I mean, he's alive and he doesn't have to be two different people anymore. He doesn't have to save the world. He can just be Clark... It's just I wish he was coming back. Everything... it all reminds me of him. He used to walk up those stairs after he got home, and put his jacket there. He held my hand for the first time right over there and there is his barn. And his telescope. And...I guess this is how it's always going to be right?" Lois asked her cousin. "He's going to haunt me no matter where I go."

"You could move, Lois. You don't have to stay here anymore," Chloe answered quietly. "We should figure out what we're going to do with this place. I don't think either of us can deal with an extra farm in our spare time."

Lois smiled sadly. "I couldn't leave though. This was home. Clark was my home."

Tears shining in her eyes, Chloe nodded. "I know what you mean. I don't know what I'm going to do without him. Both of them. He and Ollie... "

"Oliver. I'm so sorry. We will find him. Oliver isn't gone. And I'll be damned if not one of us gets our happily ever after. He's out there, Chlo. We've got the best team in the world looking for him - and there ain't nothin' that'll stop us when we find him."

"Thanks Lois. But it's getting harder to keep up hope. It's already been ten days. If we were going to find him - wouldn't we have already? I mean, what if he's... what if he's..."

"Chloe. Stop it now. Don't even say that. You know Ollie. There's no way. He's a fighter."

* * *

Half a world away, a man in torn green leather groaned. He opened his eyes, and shook his head. A drug-induced haze was clouding his vision, and he could barely make out the shapes coming toward him. But then the blackness came again.


	4. Chapter 4

Lois awoke shaking. She was shivering - cold because of the fact she had, once again, failed to correctly dry her sheets, which explained why they were missing from her bed - but shaking because of the dream she had just woken from.

Staring at the clock at her bedside, she watched ten seconds tick away before she realized her dream was becoming increasingly hazy with the passage of time.

Focus, Lane, she commanded herself. This is important.

Because, for some reason, it felt impossibly pertinent to Lois to know what she had just experienced. She closed her eyes and tried to remember what had happened.

She had been falling through space, with an intense pain in her side, staring up at a yellow sky. But the beams of light, instead of traveling down from the sun seemed to be pointed up. Maybe she was falling into the sun? She didn't know.

But somehow, she had ended up on her back. She was lying somewhere - with lights. This time, everything was white. And there was beeping. And it was getting dark.

Lois opened her eyes. 4:17 am. She groaned. She didn't try to make more sense of her dream... Instead, she let her lids droop and felt her mind go blank.

* * *

In a hospital room, miles away, a doctor signed for a set of lab results for the local John Doe. She flipped through the report, scanning the facts and figures that were the only clues to the ailments of the man lying in front of him. The strength of his vitals were growing, but his immune system was still very much deficient. The toxin that had entered his bloodstream seemed to be dispersing, but his body was not creating antibodies.

What was most worrisome was his brain activity. For most of the day and night, John Doe's brain seemed almost dormant. There was little function - but for a few moments, most often in the middle of the night, the activity was frenetic before it once again died down. The doctor worried that these periods of hyperactivity might be signals of seizures or hemorrhaging in the brain. She doubted how much longer John Doe would survive.

* * *

A.C. had just arrived at Watchtower to debrief Chloe on his latest saves and the continuing search for Green Arrow. There was no sign of Oliver, but A.C. had managed to lead a group of stranded fishermen back to port. It had taken the better part of two days to return them to land, and in the meantime, the fishermen had given A.C. a nickname.

"They called me Ariel! For god's sake, do I look like I wear a seashell bra? The least they could've done was call me Triton - Poseidon - anything! But they picked the damn Little Mermaid... Man, I should've just let them find their own way home. They probably would've ended up at the bottom of the sea with those crazy scientists who tried to dig tunnels under the ocean floor. Geothermal heating my ass."

Suddenly, Chloe perked up.

"A.C., you are brilliant."


End file.
